Open Railway Map

https://www.openrailwaymap.org/

by 123pie123 • 5 years ago

72 15 5 years ago

cozzyd• 5 years ago

I spend way too long on this website routinely. It's a lot of fun following remote lines in Canada/ Russia or looking at the many now-defunct tracks all over the US.

vidanay• 5 years ago

Tracing the defunct lines is fascinating to me. They are _everywhere_ in the US.

culopatin2• 5 years ago

I would pay to have a live view of trains that would integrate with google maps to choose my route to work so I can avoid a 20min wait while the cargo train does its thing.

dutchmartin• 5 years ago

In the Netherlands we can see the location of every passenger train since the train company just has a public api. Here is a map: https://spoorkaart.mwnn.nl/

reaperducer• 5 years ago

I would, too.

This data exists in many cities. It's what powers the "Next train/bus in xx minutes" signs. But somehow it doesn't make its way into live view applications. At least not in any of the cities in which I've lived.

I'm sure it's complicated for the map companies because America is a big place and can't be covered by one simple rail or bus company. There are hundreds of public and private transit companies in America. But it would be nice if it would start appearing in some cities.

Heck, even Amtrak would be nice to see on Apple Maps, instead of having to use Amtrak's own live train viewer: https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html

Are there any transit agencies with live train/bus views integrated into Apple or Google maps, and I've just lived in the wrong cities?

frxx• 5 years ago

Google Maps supports this. It's visible for instance on some lines in Tokyo.

culopatin2• 5 years ago

I wonder if they are afraid of hijacking’s if they make the cargo train info public. The passenger trains don’t bother me much because they are short and quick, it’s the cargo ones that go through in rush hour

jonp888• 5 years ago

In Britain you can even see if the dispatcher has turned the signal green for your train: https://www.opentraintimes.com/maps/signalling/crewe

Unfortunately, this is very much the exception. In general railway operators are extremely hostile to sharing any of the (usually very accurate) internal data they have about train movements, and perfer to stick with simple "Your train will arrive in x minutes" predictions. This sometimes gets a bit absurd:

In Germany the unions are officially against any open data sharing, for some reason(I think it's to do with making it easier for passengers to get cheaper tickets).

In Britain the freight train companies argue that information about their trains should stay secret because there is no public interest in it, and it is a competitive disadvantage if their competitors know where trains they run go.

dtgriscom• 5 years ago

... Hug-o-Death?

tacLog2• 5 years ago

Yeah, I can get the map to load fine, but the overlay of the railway data loads in really slowly and doesn't load a bunch of chunks at all.

hyperionplays• 5 years ago

Yup, not working for me.

tacLog2• 5 years ago

Does anyone have reference enough to say if this is the normal performance or if the site is getting hugged by hacker news?

It's taking 5-10 minutes to load US state wide views fully, with parts not loading in at all.

I have a good connection on my end and was just wondering if I should check back later or if this is more a slow mapping service.

ju-st• 5 years ago

It loads quite slowly even on normal days

cagey• 5 years ago

This is a timely mention since Google Earth lost its railroad layer recently (though per [0] (a) Google is offering a workaround and (b) https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ is mentioned in the comments).

[0] https://support.google.com/earth/thread/139934632/rail-lines...

elcapitan• 5 years ago

Pity it's a bit slow, this a fantastic resource.

I was doing a 2 week train trip through Germany last year and used official high speed net maps of German railways to plan a time-efficient route. This is basically very similar on the max-speed layer, I could imagine using that to plan a similar European trip.

Someone posted the infrastructure OSM map, and there are also hiking and bicycling maps based on OSM. I wonder whether it would make sense to consolidate such projects eventually, to be able to combine layers and to have somewhat centralized, equal rendering power.

Open Railway Map

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